☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
try try your whole life to be righteous and to be good
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood
Seraphina stalks.
The capitol lies in ashes. Each street that she passes through still smokes; wherever she looks, she finds what remains of ancient buildings, now lost as dust to the wind, and burning bodies. She is sure that she is becoming ashes, too – they cling to her coat like droplets of water, and she has to blink them free of her lashes. For a moment, she was becoming something else, something softer.
Now she is carnivorous.
Blood clings to her lips, and she tastes flesh in her teeth whenever she bites down; she cannot sleep. The moment that she closes her eyes, nightmares come crashing in, Calligo’s last curse upon the living. She cannot get the blood out of her mouth, even when she sleeps, cannot rip the dead, cold eyes from her mind, cannot smell anything but ash and rotting flesh, cannot forget the broken, twisted bodies that pile up on the sides of the streets, the wreckage, the aftermath - like the dead soldiers on the battlefields of her youth, the images hunt her. Now, they come with the stinging reminder that all of those corpses are hers, sent to their graves by her.
She cannot be idle. Every vein in her body hums with need, with necessity – she leads the soldiers to clear out the Davke that remain in the city’s walls. She hunts them herself. She repays what blood they have stolen from her with their own; methodically, viciously, hungrily. It feels like motion, and she cannot let herself stagnate in the smoke.
She turns an alleyway, the charcoal of her coat blending with the clouds of ash that writhe and twist in the desert wind; a young stallion moves in front of her. Davke. She knows. She recognizes him from the assault. Her tongue drags along her lips, and the spear that has remained with her since the attack – a twist of cruel irony – bobs slowly in the air at her side. She will replace it with something more fitting, when she can afford it. Something more restrained - but she has no time for that now, and no resources to waste, and she is nothing restrained now.
And what has she become but something half-feral and man-eating, a physical embodiment of the ash and blood that hangs omnipresent over the capitol? The silver emerges from the smoke in silence, grasping the end of the spear in bloodstained lips; clutching the sharpened tip with her mind, she lunges forward, slipping it under the man’s throat like a makeshift noose, and jerks back with a suddenness and intensity that leaves him choking. He writhes against her skin, and she gives him no time to free himself of her stranglehold. Instead, she lets go of the tip, sending the sharp edge of the spear dancing across the tenderness of his throat. He gasps a wet gasp, eyes rolling back white, and tumbles to the ground in a heap of uncontrollably flailing limbs. She slips away from the body and back into the shadowy embrace of the smoke, with no thought to the dead man – only the hunt that still awaits her.
When she finally slinks out of the city walls and towards the Oasis, the sun has begun to set; darkness encroaches on the horizon. She does not want to leave, but she knows that she will be of no use to her people if she lets herself crumble completely, so she slips away, escaping into the unwelcoming, pale gold of the desert.
--
It is pure chance that brings her to the Elatus Canyon. Perhaps it is the memory of Bexley Briar, bird-bones crushed under rocks and stained bright red; a near-tragedy that seems so miniscule now. Perhaps it is the memory of Acton – the thought of him makes her lips curl. Perhaps it is nothing more than the desire to escape the ruination for a breath, to try and clear the smoke from her lungs.
In any case, she finds herself drawing along its edges in time to hear the familiar clatter of hooves against sandstone; she leans in hiding against the outer walls, fresh, adrenaline-fueled anticipation flooding into her frame. Seraphina does not know what she anticipates, but it is not the sun-kissed, strained frame of Rhoswen, accompanied by a newborn that she can only assume is the child that has been swelling within her for months. She watches them, for a moment.
And then, slowly, she draws forth from the shadows to stand in front of them, each movement still a predatory saunter.
The silver is a banshee.
Her white hair frames her skull in a serpentine mass, writhing and twisting in the night air – her eyes are sunken and bloodshot and dull, every inch of her haunted and venomous and knotting with tension. Slaughter trails behind her like a ghost; the scent of fire and death trails in the wind behind her like a harbinger, howling through the canyon.
She stares her down with red-streaked eyes, lips curling fractionally at the edges. “Rhoswen.” Her voice comes out as a dry rasp, and one silvered brow quirks. “I did not expect you would return.” Much less with the child at your side. Raum was gone. She expected that the red woman would be gone with him – the ruse of their presence had been discovered. Perhaps, Seraphina thought, she still thought Raum’s intentions were unknown. It did not matter; much as she loathed the idea of assisting a traitor, the journey from Denocte had clearly worn down Rhoswen and her the filly – she couldn’t be more than a day old. Why had she come so quickly, unaccompanied? Did she care nothing for her child? For herself? Seraphina knows that she cannot turn them away now, much as she wants to. “We go to the oasis, not the capitol. It is…unsafe.” She turns, then, tilting her head to gesture her off the path that she had set. She has no desire to tell Rhoswen why the capitol is unsafe. She has no desire to tell her anything at all.
For a long moment, she is silent, as though considering – but Seraphina tires of hesitation, and there are answers that she is owed.
“Did you know, Rhoswen?” Her tone is cold and impassive as iron; quiet fury lingers like flickering ashes beneath it, the predecessor of a slow-burning and barely-contained rage that threatens to possess her, against all her will. Of course she knew. How could she not? “And do not think of lying to me. I have had more than enough of that lately.” Seraphina looks back over her shoulder at the shade-touched woman and her child, ears flattening against her skull and eyes flashing with some mix of disappointment and anger, even betrayal - so different from the indifference that she has worn all too often. Seraphina is tired. Seraphina is so, so tired. She feels her throat prickle, and the apathy comes flowing in again, extinguishing the flames that threaten at the back of her chest like cold water; her stare becomes something statuesque and empty, dull-eyed as the dead. She wants to be furious. She wants to be fire, but she can’t; if not because it will never become her, because she needs control.
tag || @rhoswen
notes || sera has no chill rn I apologize
try try your whole life to be righteous and to be good
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood
Seraphina stalks.
The capitol lies in ashes. Each street that she passes through still smokes; wherever she looks, she finds what remains of ancient buildings, now lost as dust to the wind, and burning bodies. She is sure that she is becoming ashes, too – they cling to her coat like droplets of water, and she has to blink them free of her lashes. For a moment, she was becoming something else, something softer.
Now she is carnivorous.
Blood clings to her lips, and she tastes flesh in her teeth whenever she bites down; she cannot sleep. The moment that she closes her eyes, nightmares come crashing in, Calligo’s last curse upon the living. She cannot get the blood out of her mouth, even when she sleeps, cannot rip the dead, cold eyes from her mind, cannot smell anything but ash and rotting flesh, cannot forget the broken, twisted bodies that pile up on the sides of the streets, the wreckage, the aftermath - like the dead soldiers on the battlefields of her youth, the images hunt her. Now, they come with the stinging reminder that all of those corpses are hers, sent to their graves by her.
She cannot be idle. Every vein in her body hums with need, with necessity – she leads the soldiers to clear out the Davke that remain in the city’s walls. She hunts them herself. She repays what blood they have stolen from her with their own; methodically, viciously, hungrily. It feels like motion, and she cannot let herself stagnate in the smoke.
She turns an alleyway, the charcoal of her coat blending with the clouds of ash that writhe and twist in the desert wind; a young stallion moves in front of her. Davke. She knows. She recognizes him from the assault. Her tongue drags along her lips, and the spear that has remained with her since the attack – a twist of cruel irony – bobs slowly in the air at her side. She will replace it with something more fitting, when she can afford it. Something more restrained - but she has no time for that now, and no resources to waste, and she is nothing restrained now.
And what has she become but something half-feral and man-eating, a physical embodiment of the ash and blood that hangs omnipresent over the capitol? The silver emerges from the smoke in silence, grasping the end of the spear in bloodstained lips; clutching the sharpened tip with her mind, she lunges forward, slipping it under the man’s throat like a makeshift noose, and jerks back with a suddenness and intensity that leaves him choking. He writhes against her skin, and she gives him no time to free himself of her stranglehold. Instead, she lets go of the tip, sending the sharp edge of the spear dancing across the tenderness of his throat. He gasps a wet gasp, eyes rolling back white, and tumbles to the ground in a heap of uncontrollably flailing limbs. She slips away from the body and back into the shadowy embrace of the smoke, with no thought to the dead man – only the hunt that still awaits her.
When she finally slinks out of the city walls and towards the Oasis, the sun has begun to set; darkness encroaches on the horizon. She does not want to leave, but she knows that she will be of no use to her people if she lets herself crumble completely, so she slips away, escaping into the unwelcoming, pale gold of the desert.
--
It is pure chance that brings her to the Elatus Canyon. Perhaps it is the memory of Bexley Briar, bird-bones crushed under rocks and stained bright red; a near-tragedy that seems so miniscule now. Perhaps it is the memory of Acton – the thought of him makes her lips curl. Perhaps it is nothing more than the desire to escape the ruination for a breath, to try and clear the smoke from her lungs.
In any case, she finds herself drawing along its edges in time to hear the familiar clatter of hooves against sandstone; she leans in hiding against the outer walls, fresh, adrenaline-fueled anticipation flooding into her frame. Seraphina does not know what she anticipates, but it is not the sun-kissed, strained frame of Rhoswen, accompanied by a newborn that she can only assume is the child that has been swelling within her for months. She watches them, for a moment.
And then, slowly, she draws forth from the shadows to stand in front of them, each movement still a predatory saunter.
The silver is a banshee.
Her white hair frames her skull in a serpentine mass, writhing and twisting in the night air – her eyes are sunken and bloodshot and dull, every inch of her haunted and venomous and knotting with tension. Slaughter trails behind her like a ghost; the scent of fire and death trails in the wind behind her like a harbinger, howling through the canyon.
She stares her down with red-streaked eyes, lips curling fractionally at the edges. “Rhoswen.” Her voice comes out as a dry rasp, and one silvered brow quirks. “I did not expect you would return.” Much less with the child at your side. Raum was gone. She expected that the red woman would be gone with him – the ruse of their presence had been discovered. Perhaps, Seraphina thought, she still thought Raum’s intentions were unknown. It did not matter; much as she loathed the idea of assisting a traitor, the journey from Denocte had clearly worn down Rhoswen and her the filly – she couldn’t be more than a day old. Why had she come so quickly, unaccompanied? Did she care nothing for her child? For herself? Seraphina knows that she cannot turn them away now, much as she wants to. “We go to the oasis, not the capitol. It is…unsafe.” She turns, then, tilting her head to gesture her off the path that she had set. She has no desire to tell Rhoswen why the capitol is unsafe. She has no desire to tell her anything at all.
For a long moment, she is silent, as though considering – but Seraphina tires of hesitation, and there are answers that she is owed.
“Did you know, Rhoswen?” Her tone is cold and impassive as iron; quiet fury lingers like flickering ashes beneath it, the predecessor of a slow-burning and barely-contained rage that threatens to possess her, against all her will. Of course she knew. How could she not? “And do not think of lying to me. I have had more than enough of that lately.” Seraphina looks back over her shoulder at the shade-touched woman and her child, ears flattening against her skull and eyes flashing with some mix of disappointment and anger, even betrayal - so different from the indifference that she has worn all too often. Seraphina is tired. Seraphina is so, so tired. She feels her throat prickle, and the apathy comes flowing in again, extinguishing the flames that threaten at the back of her chest like cold water; her stare becomes something statuesque and empty, dull-eyed as the dead. She wants to be furious. She wants to be fire, but she can’t; if not because it will never become her, because she needs control.
tag || @rhoswen
notes || sera has no chill rn I apologize
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
